A Brief History of the Chocolate Chip Cookie
Did you know Massachusetts has a state cookie? It’s the chocolate chip cookie, an invention attributed to Ruth Graves Wakefield of the widely known Toll House Inn. Legend has it that having run out of her standard Baker’s chocolate, she broke up a bar of Nestlé semisweet and added it to her favorite recipe, Butter Drop Do cookies.
Kathleen King in family bakery, Tate’s Bake Shop, in Southampton, New York.
The reaction by travelers was instantaneous. Soon her recipe was published in the local newspaper, positively affecting sales of Nestlé semisweet bars. Then the fictitious Betty Crocker featured Wakefield’s Toll House chocolate chip cookie on the radio program, “Famous Foods from Famous Eating Places,” prompting Nestlé to invent the semisweet morsel in 1939. In exchange for using the recipe on the back of their semisweet bar and morsel bag, she was given a lifetime supply of chocolate chips.
The chocolate chip cookie’s nationwide fame can be attributed to home bakers in Massachusetts who sent scores of the addictive Toll House cookies to GIs abroad during World War II. The soldiers shared and pretty soon orders were coming in from across the country.
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